100% or Nothin'

What is the point of eating or drinking something if it is not 100% real? I do not want to eat something that looks like a blueberry, tastes like a blueberry, but is only 75% blueberry...what the heck is the other 25%? Chemicals? Artificial blueberry gunk? Play-doh? The same goes for juice. I do not know about you, but I only want to drink something that is 100% juice; because if it is not 100% juice then what else is in it? 

When you are walking down the juice aisle at a grocery store - figuring out what juice you want for breakfast or to mix with your adult beverage over the weekend - it can be overwhelming to make a decision. There are so many choices and dozens of intriguing descriptions. Cran-Apple-Grape! Triple Berry Cocktail! Mango-Pineapple Blend! But as you have probably guessed by now, even though the bottles all look like they are filled with 100% juice, that is actually not the case. 

The front of any product - be it a bottle of juice, a box of cereal, or a bag of chips - is an advertisement. The company that makes that product is trying to grab your attention with cool labels, words, and pictures that make you look twice. It is all glitz and glam to make you want to buy that product. The front of a product tells you ZERO information about what is actually in that product. You have to flip the box over - away from the shiny label - to read the nutrition facts label and ingredient list, in order to find out the truth about that product. 

So, when you are walking down the juice aisle and you see a delectable looking "juice", you cannot just grab it off the shelf because it looks pretty and be done. You need to flip the bottle and look directly above the nutrition facts label, which is where it says how much juice is actually in that product. It will say: Contains ___% Juice. You want that % to be 100. If it is not 100, then your eyes need to scan down to the ingredient list and find out what else is actually in the liquid you are holding. What you'll probably read: water, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and some unpronounceable words. 

Juice is already sweet enough...there is absolutely no reason to add any sugar. Remember my post on calculating the number of sugar packets in something? One serving of juice contains enough sugar packets, as is. To give you some perspective: drinking a cup of orange juice is the equivalent of eating three oranges...in one sitting...in probably less than 5 minutes, if you drink your juice fast. That is a lot of sugar in your 8 ounce glass. So, I am totally in favor of watering down your juice. However, YOU should be the person adding the water...not some company. Why should you pay money for someone to water down your beverage? You are getting less juice and paying for water. Instead, buy a bottle of 100% juice and water it down yourself - the bottle will last much longer when you water it down, than if you bought a pre-watered down (and sugared-up) bottle of juice cocktail.

Fortunately, there are some trigger words on the front of "juice" boxes that usually indicate that the beverage does not contain 100% juice. When the beverage has the words cocktail, blend, or the word juice is missing from the cover (ex: Cran-Apple...no "juice" to be found), you can be pretty positive that that beverage is less than 100% juice. Companies like to trick you with phrases like "contains 100% vitamin C" - your eyes see 100% and you feel happy with your "healthy" choice. But flip over the bottle. Scarily enough the cocktail and blends typically contain less than 30% juice, which means the majority of what you're drinking (70-95%) is not juice, but rather sugar, water, high fructose corn syrup, or chemicals. De-lish. Except not. 

I hate to break it to you, but beverages like Sunny-D (5% juice and contains canola oil in the ingredient list), Nantucket Nectar Mango-Orange Juice Cocktail (20% juice), Newman's Own Grape Juice Cocktail (13% juice), Ocean Spray Cocktails (Cranberry Cocktail =27% juice, Cran-Apple/Grape/Raspberry = 15% juice), and Minute Maid Fruit Punch (5% juice), are not the best choices...unless you like beverages with less than 100% juice and more than 70% sugar, water, and chemicals. 

Making your own juice can be fun, but also time consuming (considering you have to squeeze dozens of oranges to get a sufficient amount of OJ). So of course, buying juice is a convenient option. But next time you are deciding what "juice" to buy, you need to remember to look above the nutrition facts label and see how much juice the beverage actually contains. For me, it's 100% or nothin'.